On Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian J. Castro allegedly shot Julio C. Sosa-Celis in the leg as Castro and other ICE agents chased a different man. The Hennepin County District Attorney’s Office investigated, and in May, it indicted Castro on various assault and false-reporting charges. (The DA’s office also said federal officials had attempted to thwart the investigation.)
This was the second time since President Donald Trump returned to power that Hennepin’s DA, Mary Moriarty, indicted ICE agents for violence committed during the agency’s surge in Minneapolis, as the federal government continued to show indifference toward holding immigration officers to account. In the first case, the agent, Gregory Donald Morgan, Jr., turned himself in to the authorities in Minneapolis.
But this time, Moriarty faced what should have just been a minor wrinkle. In the months between Castro’s shooting of Sosa-Celis and the issuing of the warrant for his arrest in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security transferred Castro to Texas. When the charges were filed in Minnesota, Castro refused to return from Texas, so Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did what any governor would do in this situation: He sent a request to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, asking him to arrest Castro and extradite him back to Minneapolis. And on May 29, police officers in Texas arrested Castro and confined him in the Cameron County jail, pending extradition.
Extradition between states is a straight-forward process. The Supreme Court has held that states have almost no discretion to deny a valid request, and that the only issues officials in the asylum state can consider are whether the extradition documents are proper, the person being sought has been charged with a crime, the person facing extradition is in fact the correct person, and whether the person is in fact a fugitive. These rules come directly from the U.S. Constitution, federal law and the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, which Texas has adopted. All of these use the legally-magic word of “shall,” which generally eliminates almost all discretion.
As a result, extraditions between Texas and Minnesota are generally handled quite quickly. In fact, during this summer, Abbott extradited two people back to Minnesota, each within 10 days of getting the request.
But for Castro? Months of inaction and bureaucratic stalling.
Now, Abbott has not denied the extradition request. He just says he needs more time to investigate whether Castro counts as a “fugitive,” since Castro didn’t flee to Texas but was transferred there by DHS (a distinction the Supreme Court has made clear is irrelevant). Abbott has also publicly said he is resisting extradition because he doesn’t trust Minnesota authorities due to the ongoing investigations in Minnesota into Covid-19-era social-spending fraud (an issue that is also legally irrelevant).
The federal government has made it clear that it will not charge federal agents for acts of violence, and the Supreme Court has gutted the primary avenue victims of such violence had to sue for damages.
This is more than a stalling tactic. Texas law requires that someone awaiting extradition can only be jailed for 90 days — which for Castro meant only until the end of August. And Minnesota officials said there is evidence suggesting Castro was considering absconding to Mexico once freed. That would make extradition back to Minnesota substantially harder, because international extraditions must go through the State Department, which will surely not cooperate, given that the Trump administration has made it clear it will not punish ICE officers who injure or kill people in the Democratic-led cities that Trump as literally called “the enemy within.”
Because of this, Minnesota sued in federal court to force Texas to return Castro. But this week, a judge rejected that request, stating that none of the laws put any sort of time limit on the need to approve the request. And so Castro was released on Aug. 27.
This opens up another troubling front in the ongoing struggle to hold ICE and other federal agents accountable for the violence they are committing in Democratic-led cities. The federal government has made it clear that it will not charge federal agents for acts of violence, and the Supreme Court has gutted the primary avenue victims of such violence had to sue for damages. And even in the best of times, “supremacy clause immunity” makes it hard (though not impossible) for state and local officials to charge federal officers for acts committed while those officers are on duty. And these are not the best of times, given that agencies like the FBI are clearly working to affirmatively thwart such cases.
But now, it looks like at least one Republican governor is willing to violate express constitutional, federal and state laws to provide sanctuary for federal officials charged with harming people in Democratic-led cities or states. And if the implausible argument Abbott has made to contest extradition — that Castro was ordered to Texas by the DHS and thus is not a “fugitive,” an argument that even the federal judge in the Castro case admitted likely runs afoul of caselaw — is eventually upheld, then DHS will be able to exploit Republican contempt for Democratic cities by moving agents around to states that will then deny any sort of extradition request.
This would make accountability no longer difficult but essentially impossible (at least until the Democrats retake the White House). It would also show that the growing divide between Republican- and Democratic-led states now includes Republican governors being willing and able to provide refuge to those who commit politically motivated violence in Democratic states.
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